Earlier this year, Brooklyn-based real estate development firm Totem announced plans for Herkimer-Williams, a mixed-use complex in Broadway Junction, Brooklyn. Now in the environmental review process with the New York City Department of City Planning, the project aims to transform a 94,000-square-foot assemblage into a permanently affordable housing development accompanied with commercial, community, and industrial space, and public open areas. The project site is bound by Fulton Street to the north, Atlantic Avenue to the south, East New York Avenue to the east, and Van Sinderen Avenue to the west.
Herkimer-Williams is expected to create 600 permanently affordable housing units, 120,000 square feet of community facility space, 24,000 square feet of new public space for community events and programming, and 1 million square feet of retail, commercial, and industrial space. The plan for Herkimer-Williams is based on community planning studies and surveys that highlighted desired improvements at Broadway Junction. Despite the 2016 rezoning, which was expected to yield 6,500 homes by 2030, only 596 units were completed in the rezoned area by March 2023, with just 157 of those affordable.
Rendering of the site of Herkimer-Williams, via BerlinRosen
The project comes at a time of increasing public and private investment in East New York, including a $500 million investment in Broadway Junction by the NYC Economic Development Corporation and Metropolitan Transit Authority, the city’s plan to build a new local office for 1,100 staffers, and Governor Hochul‘s advancement of the Interborough Expressway.
Totem has engaged in a community engagement process over the past two years in planning the development to ensure the proposal reflects community needs. The firm has fine-tuned its proposal based on feedback from these meetings.
“Small businesses are critical to the strength and vitality of our community,” said Camille Newman, director of the Brooklyn Women’s Business Center, LDCENY. “When we nurture and uplift local entrepreneurs, economic benefits are felt across the board. Aspiring entrepreneurs in East New York shouldn’t have to look elsewhere to open up shop. They should have the ability to do so in the community they call home. Herkimer-Williams will deliver essential retail and commercial space where there currently is none, helping bring new life to Broadway Junction and the surrounding neighborhoods.”
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Would have been a lot easier and frankly more conducive to redevelopment had the elevated Canarsie Line (L) been rerouted underground and into the Bay Ridge branch r.o.w. as was planned 50 years ago but never accomplished.
From 6,500 homes to just 600; hopefully this number will increase given the excellent transit access here.
While I do support the Interborough Expressway, having the corrupt and incompetant MTA in charge of it will prove decades delay and many billions over budget. Corruption is all the MTA knows. Because Hochul killed congestion pricing to please the wealthy, that and any other new projects have no chance. This state could be so much more if not for a legacy of constant willful corruption.
I need a car to get my job and I live paycheck to paycheck making a per hour wage and I would have been bombed by the congestion pricing every time I’d want to come into the city.
It’s specifically because the MTA is a sponge with the money given to it that I don’t trust them with more money after squandering any money in their possession until now.
And, as someone who always pays the fare when I’m in the city (and did pay always for the 15 years I used it when I was in city before my car and well before I wound up at this job and life circumstance) even if no one is looking, I think the MTA should be researching ways to stop fare evasion (which is costing them a lot a lot of money) instead of building toll scanners so that people with cars should sponsor the fares of those who don’t.
Or maybe if I can prove I pay the subway and bus fares I shouldn’t have to pay the congestion pricing?